A Semi-physical Method for Tire Normal Load Estimation Using Intelligent Tires under Cornering Conditions

Intelligent tire is an emerging solution for tire state monitoring, promising to help meet the strict requirements of future autonomous driving for vehicle safety control. Tire normal load is a fundamental state in vehicle dynamic systems and needs to be estimated accurately. In this paper, a semi-physical method for tire normal load estimation under cornering conditions using an intelligent tire system is proposed. A triaxial accelerometer which measured the acceleration on the tire tread is used as the sensor of the developed intelligent tire system. A semi-physical model for tire normal load using tread radial deformation, lateral force, and wheel rolling speed as inputs is proposed, where the lateral force is estimated by lateral translation deformation of carcass. Through experimental verification, it is demonstrated that the proposed method can estimate the tire normal load with satisfactory accuracy under both free rolling and cornering conditions.